from the go-julie dept

Some fantastic news from EFFland, where Mark Cuban and Markus 'Notch' Persson have agreed to give EFF $250,000 each in order to fund its latest efforts to stop bad patents. This includes naming EFF attorney Julie Samuels "The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents." This is a job title that only a few people deserve and, knowing Julie, she's one of them. Over the years, EFF has done some really great work on patents, but they've often seemed like a backburner issue compared to other things -- so we're excited to see what comes next.

Apple vs Samsung

Samsung gains win as Apple's "pinch-to-zoom" patent rejected.

The U.S. patent office has ruled that Apple's (AAPL) "pinch-to-zoom" patent shouldn't have been granted, boosting Samsung (SSNLF.PK) in its attempt to overturn a $1.05B U.S. jury verdict against it in its global IP war with Apple. The patent was one of six that Samsung was ruled to have breached in the companies' summer trial and is the second of those six to have been preliminarily struck down.

EFF's approach

EFF wants to reduce the term of software patents to 5 years instead of abolishing them altogether. This would serve to validate software patents and would leave room for congress to expand them again, perhaps even beyond their present duration.